Crater Lake - 17 degree temperature!

When we got up this morning, the temperature outside was 23. We worked on the web site a little, had lunch and decided to travel to Crater Lake which is about 100 miles south of us. Marcie had been there many years ago during the spring and we both had visited it in 2006 during the summer.


The trip there was windy and cold. Just after leaving the TT Preserve, it got cloudy and we ran into a couple of near "white outs".


The ground was covered with snow in spotty areas. THEN we arrived at Crater Lake. The further up the mountain we went the more snow on the ground we encountered. It seems that this area gets close to 500 inches of snow per year! The snow along side of the road kept getting higher and higher. It was almost like driving through a tunnel. When we were here in the summer we had seen and photographed the tall marker poles along side of the road, NOW we really knew what they were for.


When we arrived at the visitors center, there was a sign indicating where the entry tunnel was. They build a tunnel sloping upward from the building with shutters which they close in the winter to allow for people to gain access to the building. After going into the building, we looked, or at least tried to, look out the front door and window, to see nothing but snow!



We went up to the rim of Crater Lake. The temperature was 17 and the wind was blowing. We were quite surprised that we could actually see a portion of the lake. If you remember from our trip in '06, this was probably the prettiest lake we have ever seen and we stayed a week or so just looking at it, not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of photo's we had taken. It was so different being here during the winter, The road around the lake is 30 miles and it takes 4 months for the crews to clear the snow from it. They use bulldozers to lower the depth to 4 feet then use snow plows to finish it up. It is just mind boggling how much snow that is!! It will be interesting to look at the summer photo's, I am sure that we had one from this location or close to it.

Please visit our Photo Gallery to see the rest of the pictures.